


Sea Swells

by ideallyqualia



Series: Rare Pairs [66]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zoo, Birds, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 12:02:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8206484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideallyqualia/pseuds/ideallyqualia
Summary: Goshiki and Ushijima walk penguins for a living. The atmosphere doesn't miss either of them.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is an au where they work at a zoo if you didnt catch it from the tags.
> 
> here it comes now. back to aus involving birds, classic me. 
> 
> i thought about trying to write drabbles for all the shiratorizawa ships before the next season of hq started, but this ballooned and i failed and i give up.

The trills and honking screeches of penguins filled the air as Ushijima came to their enclosure. They lived in typical penguin clamor, flapping their wings and sending clumps of snow in the air as they shuffled through and shoveled paths. Ushijima carried a bucket of fish with him, and at his appearance, the penguins swiveled and clacked their beaks in his direction, scrambling over each other to reach him.

Goshiki waved at Ushijima from the other side of the see-through wall separating visitors from the penguins. He cupped his hands around his mouth and attempted to yell, but Ushijima and the penguins couldn't hear him. The people around him cringed. Ushijima paused and gauged him, his eyes following Goshiki's hands with a detached awareness, slow to his fingertips curling back into his palms.

Goshiki hurried through the staff-only entrance and met him inside. "I'm back from my break!" He pulled gloves out of his pockets and tugged them on.

By now several visitors were watching the penguins through the viewing-glass, pointing at them stumbling to eat the fish that Ushijima gave them. The appearance of any staff always stirred up the penguins into activity, sending them frolicking and bumbling to see what was happening, and in turn, their activity drew people to watch.

"They just started eating," Ushijima said.

Penguins beat their flippers trying to hover around Ushijima's hands. He crouched to feed them more fish, and they flurried again, squawking and screeching for more.

Goshiki reached his hands into the bucket and pulled out an armful of fish. He gathered them to his chest. Ushijima sat back and wrinkled his nose, but Goshiki failed to notice. He lowered himself to the ground, stooping down on his knees, and he let some of the penguins flock around him.

"You're going to smell like fish for a while again," Ushijima said.

"All I have to do is change clothes."

"As long as you're not bothered." Ushijima returned his gaze to the penguins. One of them fumbled and fell on its stomach, and it flapped its wings in a delayed response, letting out a distressed honk. Ushijima removed his hands from the bucket to pick up the penguin and place it back on its feet. Without him holding the bucket, the penguins knocked it over, and the rest of the fish spilled over the floor.

Ushijima watched the fish slide out on the rocky floor in a lopsided wave of scales. The penguins broke into chaos, and he continued watching, his calmness filling the moment the way his silence sometimes did.

Goshiki turned, his arms slumping and relaxing around his load of fish. "I guess letting them not eat by hand for a day'll be okay, right?"

Ushijima shook his head and reached for a cluster of fish. "The penguins need to eat equal amounts. We can't have some overeating at the expense of others not eating enough."

"Right..." Goshiki groaned and dumped his fish into the bucket to free his hands and help gather the rest.

They managed to round up most of the fish. Some of them inevitably fell into hungry mouths, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Ushijima returned to feeding them one at a time, handing the penguins food fish by fish. Goshiki settled to sit next to him. One penguin approached him again for another fish, and Goshiki nudged it away.

"You've had enough." Goshiki sent it in the other direction with a light push. It continued to waddle that way from the momentum, glancing around side to side, and it gave a slow screech in confusion.

The bucket's contents dwindled to nothing. Ushijima picked it up when everything was eaten. "They'll be satisfied for now. Let's go inside and prepare for their walk later."

Goshiki skipped to keep up with him as they left and headed through a staff entrance. Tendou leaned back in his chair and waved.

"How're the penguins?"

"Well fed," Ushijima said. He sat down and pulled a stack of papers closer to skim through the top layers.

Tendou crossed his arms behind his head. "I want to see them walk today in their little parade." He stretched a groan into a whine. "I don't think I can. I'll be busy later."

Goshiki made a vague gesture out the door. "I have to go check on the fish supply."

"Go ahead. I'll meet you later." Ushijima continued to read over a page.

Goshiki fiddled his hands together in a light clap, and then he took off. Tendou turned in his chair, swiveling by the wheels. He glanced between Ushijima and the now vacated doorway.

"Tsutomu's been with us for a while now, huh?" Tendou asked.

"I suppose." Ushijima signed his name with a pen on one of the pages.

"Wakatoshi. This is your break."

"I don't mind."

" _I_ mind." Tendou pushed the papers down onto the table, forcing them out of Ushijima's hands.

Ushijima raised an eyebrow. "What was that for?"

"You're lucky enough to work with penguins, and you don't even appreciate it. You're supposed to be a fun-loving...penguin-lover." Tendou flicked his wrist to shake his hand out of its stillness.

"I don't follow."

" _Don't do work when you're on your break._ " Tendou gathered the papers in a loose pile and collected them to his side of the table. He stole them out from under Ushijima's hands, and Ushijima's arms hovered in the air for a moment before withdrawing.

"What should I do, then?"

"Relax. Think of names for the penguins. I don't know." Tendou shrugged. "Too bad you and Tsutomu don't take them at the same time all the time. I bet you're both hilarious when you have nothing to do."

"What makes you think that?"

"I don't know. It's just a feeling." Tendou sipped from his water bottle.

Ushijima crossed his arms and reclined against the back of his chair. "I don't think you mean that the way that word's supposed to be used."

"I'll decide." Tendou clasped his hands together and cracked his fingers. He stood and proceeded to the fridge in their break room. "Want a cookie?"

"The only ones I saw in there belong to Semi."

"I know." Tendou bit one to hold it in his mouth, and he closed the fridge and reclaimed his seat. "If you only take one at a time, he barely notices."

"Isn't that cruel?"

"He doesn't even notice." Tendou flapped his hand up and down from the loose give of his wrist. "He doesn't complain or anything."

"If you say so." Ushijima shifted up in his seat to reach his pocket, and he retrieved his phone and laid it flat on the table. He swiped on it with a careful finger.

Tendou leaned forward to his elbows on the table. "Are you _fidgeting_? I've never seen you idle time on your phone."

"I'm searching on the internet."

"You're only using one finger. That's _reallllllly_ slow."

Ushijima grunted, but he didn't respond with an answer. He continued typing.

"Fine, I see how it is," Tendou said without any hint of tortured esteem. He stretched his arms and got up. "Off to work again. See ya, Wakatoshi." Tendou disappeared behind a door.

Ushijima spent a few minutes typing and searching on his phone. He remained calm and unfrustrated for the duration of his search.

Goshiki reentered the staff room. "Are you ready to get back to work? It's almost time for the penguin parade!"

"I'm ready. Let's go." Ushijima led him out, and they fell side by side to walk together.

Goshiki bumped his hands together. They came into fists, and he pushed them together so hard that his knuckles cracked, and he winced. He gathered them back at his sides.

"Something the matter?" Ushijima asked.

Stiff-shouldered at once, Goshiki creaked in his throat and tensed straighter. "Nope! Sorry! Didn't mean to," he said.

Ushijima faced ahead again and stopped at the penguin enclosure's gate. "Help me with the other side."

Goshiki nodded and bounded to the other side of the gate. He crossed in front of Ushijima, brushing by his arm, and Ushijima had to pause and let Goshiki pass. They unlatched the gates, and one by one, penguins waddled out, or hopped over the threshold into the snowy expanse of the walk ahead.

Visitors lined the sides of the parade route. No one could pass over the lines painted by the staff in the snow, and no one could pet the birds, but everyone was ready with phones and cameras in hand. A few people stood on their knees to stay beside their children. Kids wandered a little away here and there, and every so often, their guardians had to reel them back.

Once the penguins congregated into a vague group, Ushijima and Goshiki walked along behind them and joined them, their presence encouraging them to keep moving. Other staffers were staggered along the route, including their friends, Semi and Kawanishi. Semi wore a megaphone strapped to his back in case of emergency.

"The penguins are so hyper today! Look at this one!" Goshiki hurried to follow one of them flapping to fumble through mounds of snow. Everyone stepped back to avoid breaking the "no touching" rule, and the penguin continued past, stopping behind the crowd and staring up a wall.

Goshiki stomped through the snow to catch up and stop the penguin in its tracks. He tried cutting it off and herding it with a gentle wave away, and it failed to take the hint. It beat its wings again and stared at a child a few feet away.

Finally, Goshiki gave in and nudged it with his hands. The penguin skipped and turned back. It waddled at the same speed, incautious, and it wound up skidding down the snow it had climbed. It fell onto its stomach and slid the rest of the way.

Goshiki returned to Ushijima's side. "I think that's the same one that keeps doing that."

"They're birds. You can't expect them to follow an orderly pattern." Ushijima pointed down the path ahead. "All they have to do is walk in this general direction. With us behind them, they can't go backward."

"You can't insult them like that. They'll hear you!"

"I wasn't insulting them." Ushijima lowered his hand and took a few more slow steps alongside Goshiki. "I think they're fine birds. Especially ours."

Goshiki broke into a smile, the kind that wavered and twitched to change to a different variation as he reconsidered everything in the moment several times. "I think they're really cute and the best."

Ushijima glanced between the penguins and Goshiki. "You..." His voice trailed off. He didn't end at a certain and discrete point in time, his voice softened and faded into nothingness.

Goshiki leaned forward. "Me? Me what?"

Ushijima looked ahead again. He brought his gloved hand to his face and held his mouth for a moment. "You seem really fond of penguins."

Goshiki could, for a comet tail's worth of transience in a second, see Ushijima's mouth twitch in the corners around his hand. He tilted his head. "What? What's weird about that?"

"Nothing."

"But you looked embarrassed for a second. I saw it right--" Goshiki poked Ushijima's cheek, "--there."

Ushijima's face squashed. He didn't move away from Goshiki's finger. "I don't think I was embarrassed."

Goshiki pulled away. "You don't _think_?"

The penguins managed to proceed forward another few paces, and Goshiki and Ushijima followed their lead, both of them halfway turned towards each other. Some of the penguins were energetic, but they walked diagonally to the crowd, or waddled in circles, and the end result was barely any displacement travelled.

Their walk usually took a while.

"I don't think I was embarrassed," Ushijima repeated after a deliberate pause.

"You can't admit it! You're a terrible liar. You really can't do it, lie." Goshiki snorted. "Your face looked like the way people do after seeing something really cute and getting caught and then embarrassed."

Ushijima's nose wrinkled. "Do you understand what that means?"

"You got embarrassed," Goshiki said in almost-singsong. "Tendou'll laugh."

"Oh. I see..." Ushijima lapsed into silence.

The penguins continued their trek. A few of the penguins ahead in the group waddled slightly faster, their wings held back behind themselves to maintain their balance in their pace. They still wandered aimlessly on the path, waddling with open curiosity and craned necks. Their short legs had to work hard to carry them in their stubby steps.

They wound around and made it back to the start. Goshiki closed the gate behind the penguins as they fell back in line and filed into their home.

Semi came up behind Ushijima and Goshiki. "What were you talking about back there? You looked distracted for a couple minutes."

"We were just talking about the penguins," Goshiki said. "I think the same one's the one that keeps trying to go into the crowd."

"Uh-huh." Semi pulled the megaphone strap over his head and carried it under his arm. "Well, everything's well and good, so I'll drop this off and leave you two alone."

Goshiki turned to Ushijima. "I think he's sore that his job isn't as good as ours."

"He didn't sound sore to me."

"He did." Goshiki nodded with false-sageness, his eyes briefly closed.

Ushijima fell quiet. His eyes flicked ahead, weighed serious and unreadable but still with a soft press of lips, and he led them back to the storeroom.

 

* * *

 

"What're these?" Goshiki leaned onto the table in the staffroom and peered around a basket filled with cookies.

"I dunno. It was here when I got here." Tendou sat down and took one.

"What if it's not for us?"

"Tsutomu, it's sitting on the table without a note to keep our hands off. It's fair game. Mine." Tendou muffled his last words into a bite of cookie.

Goshiki couldn't deny Tendou's logic. He slid into a seat across from him and grabbed one for himself.

Ushijima opened the door and slipped his jacket off to hang it on the coat rack. He approached the fridge and retrieved a water bottle for himself.

Tendou spun the basket around. "Wakatoshi, do you know where this came from?"

"That's from me. It's to make up for all the cookies that are constantly stolen from Semi."

" _He's not supposed to know_ ," Tendou hissed. He flicked the basket and sat back. "I can't eat this anymore."

"Good. That's more for Semi," Ushijima said.

Tendou leaned forward again, folding his arms and balancing against them. "No, never mind, I have to eat them."

Ushijima looked at Goshiki. "You should have some, too."

"O-oh, thanks!" Goshiki swiped a handful of cookies, and a napkin to hold them. He plucked one from his private pile and reoriented it for a bite.

Ushijima claimed a seat and watched them eat. After idling for a minute, he glanced to Tendou. "Where's Semi? He's usually here in the morning."

"Eh," Tendou grunted with a dismissive wave. "He's late, sometimes."

"I...wouldn't expect that from him," Ushijima said.

Tendou burst out laughing. "You, surprised! Eita-kun's done some good work today, so far."

Goshiki marveled at the rest of his hoard. "These are great! Where're they from?"

"I made them. I don't like store-bought cookies." Ushijima demonstrated his affinity by taking a cookie for himself. He took a small bite, and then another, in a series of what could be called nibbles.

"You can bake!?" Goshiki's face lapsed through various expressions, smiling and flustering and tightening his mouth to disguise it all.

"Yeah, why're you holding out on us? You could've been making us some this whole time." Tendou clicked his tongue and stowed a couple cookies in a napkin. He tied it and carried it to his desk. After scribbling a small note on a piece of paper, he attached it and stuffed it in the fridge.

"Oh. Do you want weekly cookie baskets?" Ushijima asked Tendou.

"I think he's tricking you," Goshiki said. He leaned closer to Ushijima. "Don't let him trick you into doing things for him."

As Tendou approached the table again, Goshiki slammed his arm over the table to block Tendou, and he wrapped his foot around the chair leg to tug it closer. Tendou put his hands on his hips.

"Wow. I don't know what to do." Tendou stretched and yawned. "Anyway, I'm outta here. See ya later Wakatoshi, Tsutomu." Tendou flapped a salute and left.

Goshiki returned his attention to Ushijima with a grin. "It looks like we'll run out before Semi even gets here."

"I suppose so." Ushijima rummaged on the table under a pile of papers, and he procured one he was looking for. He started reading.

"Isn't it kinda weird? Making a basket of cookies for Semi? Baskets are like gifts."

"He had to be repaid."

"Yeah, but _gifts_ ," Goshiki emphasized. "Like flowers, candy, chocolate, candy and chocolate in the shape of flowers, soap, and paperweights."

Ushijima lowered his paper and raised an eyebrow. "Do you want a gift?"

Goshiki jerked. "No!" He coughed and shook his head. "I'm not trying to get at that! I'm not as bad as Tendou. I'm not asking for anything."

"Alright." Ushijima refocused on his papers.

"Gifts are for birthdays," Goshiki mumbled. "And holidays, and close friends, and anniversaries, and...things and not _random_ things."

"I understand."

Goshiki grumbled. "I'm not asking for anything," he repeated.

Ushijima's mouth tugged.

 

* * *

 

Goshiki and Ushijima were assigned penguin parade duty again. Kawanishi headed over to oversee the crowd in the distance, and Goshiki and Ushijima released the penguins. They flocked in the middle of the path and set a course ahead. None of them wandered at the start like they did last time, but one penguin milled behind and stayed right in front of Goshiki and Ushijima.

"What should we do?" Goshiki asked. "I don't think I've ever seen one of them not want to walk at all."

"Maybe it's coming down with a sickness." Ushijima crouched. "What's wrong? Are you ill?"

Goshiki redirected his surfacing fluster into his arm, and he shifted to snickering into his hand. The closest visitors bent to watch Ushijima pet the penguin's back and investigate its flippers and feet, and after his reaction fell away, Goshiki hurried to pick up the slack and shuffle behind the other penguins.

He glanced back after a minute. Ushijima's fond expression was gone, and he stood back up. The penguin flapped its wings and hovered around his leg. He regarded it with a frown subdued in confusion, and his frown remained level as he took a few steps, the penguin hovering with him.

"I don't understand what it's doing," Ushijima said, "but I don't think it's sick. Eccentric, maybe."

"I've never seen one of them specifically like you like this. What'd you do?"

"Nothing." Ushijima jiggled his foot, and the penguin stopped waddling and shook itself, too. Spectators laughed and pointed.

Goshiki bent and petted it, and it fumbled and fell on its stomach. It paddled away on its flippers. The flock ahead didn't notice, and it plowed right into another penguin, toppling it and sending it screeching.

Goshiki stood straight again. "I don't understand what I did, or what you did, but it's gone." He turned and finally found Semi.

Semi was tense, sending glares to Goshiki and Ushijima and stiffly grasping the strap of his megaphone with his hand. He didn't outright wave at them, but the twitches in his arm hinted at it.

"This walk is already going really slowly," Ushijima remarked. "We can't do anything to hurry them, though. As long as they get the exercise, we can't rush them."

"Do you think it makes them happy, walking around outside free like this?"

"I'd like to think they're happy. Unhealthy penguins don't move so much, and they don't vocalize as loudly. There's really no point in playing in the snow unless they're happy." Ushijima's gaze went to a penguin tugging on a tree branch that poked out of the snow.

"So they're happy, and you think they're happy, huh..." Goshiki's feet crunched over the floor in a few more steps. "Does that mean you're happy, too?"

"I don't see the connection, but yes, I am. I have no reason not to be." Ushijima glanced at the penguins. "I like holding them when I have to."

"They're so cute when you pet them! I really do think that makes them happy." Goshiki nodded.

The penguins' walk came to a close, and Semi met them at their gate. "What were you two doing? You held everything up back there."

Kawanishi looked at his wrist. "They took five minutes, at _most_."

"You don't have a watch," Semi complained.

"One of the penguins was acting oddly, but it was just odd behavior. Excusable and explainable for a bird," Ushijima said.

Semi sighed and relaxed. "Well, as long as it wasn't anything serious..."

"It wasn't." Goshiki turned. "C'mon, let's go back to the staffroom. I'm hungry."

"Coming." Ushijima followed.

"I smelled really good bread earlier. I think it was Tendou's. Let's take some from him!" Goshiki stopped after he hung his coat. There were several baskets on the table in various sizes, and filled with different gifts.

"Oh, they came." Ushijima stepped around Goshiki in the entryway and fetched his drink from the fridge.

"What came? Were these delivered?"

"Gifts. Tendou told me they're better when they're delivered, and you wanted some."

"But... I didn't say..." Goshiki covered his mouth, and then dragged his hand down and away. "I didn't...!"

Ushijima raised his head. "You don't want them?"

Goshiki lowered on his feet and grumbled. "I want them."

"You should take them and claim them before the others return. They're supposed to be specially for you," Ushijima said.

Goshiki flopped into a seat at the table and stared out at the baskets, still unable to properly respond. "But there's so many...where do I put them...?"

**Author's Note:**

> (General A/N that exists at the end of all my fics): I find unsolicited concrit really rude, I'm not looking for any. Please don't tell me someone was OOC/something happened you didn't like/it's too short/etc. in any bookmarks or comments.


End file.
